Chapter Text
John Watson hasn’t slept. It’s been twenty-four hours since Sherlock returned, battered and bruised and drugged to the gills, inexplicably set free by his abductors, and more than two days since John had gotten any sleep. Military vigilance has kept John awake, keeping watch. Sherlock has been sprawled limp and unconscious over the entire surface of John’s bed since yesterday, so deeply asleep he hasn't even turned over. John hasn’t left the room. Hasn’t left Sherlock’s side. Afraid that Sherlock will stop breathing, go cold, or simply disappear if John closes his eyes for too long.
His logical side knows that Sherlock will be fine eventually, but he cannot make himself leave. The great detective looks so fragile, vulnerable in sleep. His forehead and jaw are spotted with bruises in the shape and configuration of fingertips. John can’t keep himself from picturing Moriarty’s cruel hand gripping Sherlock’s face, forcing him to perform God-knows-what demeaning, vicious, disgusting acts, probably wrenching his mouth open to . . . No. John shakes his head. He wants to keep his anger stoked and blazing, but not this way. He doesn’t want to picture Sherlock being abused.
But Sherlock’s lips are bruised, too, the recurve bow fuller than usual, the delicate skin stained as if by wine. Not the kind of bruise that rises after being hit, but the kind of bruising that results from repeated, crushing kisses. John doesn't want to think about that part, either. No kisses between mortal enemies. He only wants to concentrate the anger inside him, to refine the certainty of knowing that Moriarty has to be killed, and imagine the pleasure John will feel when he does it.
Sherlock begins to snore, the inevitable consequence of Sherlock chain-smoking cigarettes as soon as he got home. John was going to have to put a stop to that as soon as possible, but in the moment, it was better to have just let it happen, to let Sherlock have that sense of control, even if only over his own self-destruction. He’d been drugged, kidnapped, imprisoned, restrained. Assaulted.
. . . raped . . .
John bites his lip until he tastes salt. Captain Watson. Eyes front. Pull it together. Mustn’t dwell on it. Or it will destroy me, and him, and us. Keep strong for us, the new us that exists. Sherlock and me, together. That’s stronger than anything Moriarty can throw at us.
John stretches his eyes open and yawns. He’s tempted to lie down, curl up next to Sherlock, catch even a few minutes’ sleep. The soldier's sense of duty galvanizes him again, and he makes a practical decision: For a few minutes, long enough to make tea and something quick to eat, Sherlock will be all right. Has to be. John has to have that faith. Also (suddenly aware of it) he desperately needs a pee. His joints ache when he stands, and he hesitates at the bedside for a moment, his hand hovering over Sherlock’s shoulder without touching. Sherlock only snores more loudly.
John is able to see to his own needs in less than five minutes. Holding a slice of toast in his mouth and a cup of tea in his hand, he backs quietly through the door of his bedroom. Setting down the toast, John almost jumps out of his skin at the sight of Sherlock not just sat up in bed, but standing on it, fingers scrabbling at the moldings at the top of the wall. “Oh, for fuck’s sake—! Sherlock!” John half-shouts, putting the cup on the bureau and shaking his now-scalded hand. “What are you doing? For God’s sake, sit down.”
Sherlock very slowly turns his head, his eyes flickering over the face of his devoted friend. Hair shoved vertical on one side from sleeping on it, face stark pale and eyes nearly colorless, he’s never looked more like an alien.
“Unless you have morphine,” Sherlock mutters, voice stretched tight with pain, “fuck off.”
John grasps Sherlock's bony white wrist. “Sherlock, now, come down from there. You’re ill. I’ve made tea; please, have some. Have this one. I've not even sipped it.” Easily, much more easily than John was expecting, he is able to pull Sherlock off the wall. “You should have that toast as well. Nothing on it.”
Sherlock wraps his arms around his greyhound ribs, shoulders hunched and quivering. His complexion is tinted green-grey, like dirty water, his temples damp with sweat. “No. No food. I’m not ill; I’m sick. You know the difference. Now come on. I know you have opiates. You gave me some earlier." His hands scrub desperately over his face, scratching his arms so hard they leave red welts. "Please, John. This is unbearable."
John grimaces. “That was before,” he tries to explain. “You were hurt—bleeding—!”
"I'm hurting now," Sherlock groans through gritted teeth.
"It's withdrawal," John admits sadly. "I can't help you; you'll have to get through this on your own. It’ll only be a few days."
“I tell you, I’m sick!” Sherlock shouts. His arms clench spasmodically, teeth bared in a snarl more of pain than anger. “It’s getting worse! For fuck’s sake, John, if you aren’t going to help—!” His teeth snap shut mid-sentence, his eyes fly open wide, and he bolts with lightning speed for the door. John pursues, frantic with worry—he’s likely to do anything—but Sherlock only dashes into the toilet, collapses, and begins to retch.
Sighing, rolling his eyes, John checks to make sure he’s got his phone on him, and fully charged. So much for sleep. It’s going to be another long day, this one much less pleasant than lying quietly next to a sleeping Sherlock.
This isn’t John's first time having to supervise an opiate detox. Afghanistan brought him far more than his share of pathetic, whining, shitting, junk-sick souls, soldiers and civilians alike. Not all of them had gotten hooked deliberately; some of the absolute worst were injured men, still in pain, grown dependent on the narcotics given them to treat gunshot wounds and broken bones long-healed. More than once John had been ordered to simply give a soldier the drugs he asked for; too valuable to spend the time to get them straight. War on, and all. And if someone was simply dying, John believed absolutely in making the last moments comfortable.
But Sherlock is simply not dying. Though, likely, at the moment, he feels like he is.
Sherlock has almost completely inserted his head into the toilet bowl, his angular, spine-knobbled back clenching hard. His thinness is awful. He had no weight to lose before all this happened, and now he's losing the only nutrients he's had in ten days. John wets a cloth in the sink, and when Sherlock sits back onto his heels, breathless, tear-streaked, John gently presses the cloth to Sherlock's forehead. Sherlock tries to swipe John's ministering hands away, but can’t; he’s too weak. In the next moment, Sherlock vomits without effort, all down his bare chest, all over John's feet and ankles.
"Oops," Sherlock says, a faint smile playing at the corners of his lips.
"Right, you," John says briskly, "into the tub, then." He steps out of his besmirched trousers and into the tub, runs the tap, wipes himself down with the damp cloth. Sherlock clumsily follows him in, sinking down and slumping back against John’s legs. Patiently, John clucks his tongue and tries to wash Sherlock's belly.
"I’m not a baby," Sherlock snarls, snatching the cloth away. "I can do it myself. I’m not that infirm!”
"You're a rotten patient," John replies mildly. He thinks of taking off his pants, sitting in the tub, too; thinks better of it, and steps out.
"Been worse."
"I can imagine." John towels his own feet dry, wipes the toilet seat and the floor, and sits down with a weary sigh.
"Look, just fuck off! You don’t want to be here, so go away!" Sherlock growls.
"Can't. It's not safe."
“It does you no good to hover. It’s insulting—er—oh, bugger.” Sherlock hiccups, then gags again, unproductively this time. The spasmodic retching returns. He doesn't protest when John lifts him out of the tub, wraps him in a dry towel, and helps him kneel in front of the toilet bowl again. Not without relief, John has to leave the room to fetch more towels and a clean dressing gown, and hastily step into a pair of clean trackie bottoms.
When he returns, Sherlock is now seated on the toilet, still shivering and spasming, hugging himself, glaring daggers of hateful embarrassment. His belly churns so dramatically that even John can hear it; progress is now being made in the other direction, as it were. "Now will you leave me be?" Sherlock croaks.
John can't help smiling as he shakes his head. "I've seen worse," he replies. Children in pieces. A young woman, beaten to death, found three weeks later, burst open in the Afghani summer heat. The entire population of a little town off the Tarmak River, suffering from ameobic dysentery. His own sister, drunk out of her mind, driving off in a car. "Much worse."
Sherlock rolls his bloodshot eyes. “You’ve no respect for my privacy."
“Not just now, I don’t,” John agrees. “I’m going to bring you a glass of water, and you are going to drink it, even if it just comes right back out again; it'll still do you good. Sorry, Sherlock, but you're under my care now."
"Joyous," Sherlock drawls.
A few sips of water manage to stay inside him, but Sherlock hardly seems the better for it. He is nearly weeping now. “Please, John. It can’t be nice to see me suffer. You can make this better, you know. Just a little something. Another two-dot. Some cough mixture. Something.”
Sadly, John shakes his head. "No," he says. “It would only make your withdrawal longer. It might help you feel better for the moment, but we'd end up back here, nonetheless.” He tucks another towel around Sherlock's pale, bony shoulders. "You know this as well as I do. You've been through this before, haven't you? At least once?"
The statement is acknowledged with another eye roll. “Get me a cigarette, at least.”
“Absolutely not! I’ll fetch your patches, but no cigarettes; wouldn’t do for you to get hooked back on those.”
"Fuck! I can't do this!" Sherlock snaps. When John offers him a fresh glass of water, Sherlock waves it away. “I need to work. A distraction. Something to occupy my mind.”
“I’ll bring in the newspaper. But right now, you need to hydrate and rest. You’re not just in withdrawal.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” Sherlock’s pale lips tighten. “Every moment I’m in here, clues and evidence are being lost—”
John shrugs. “You won't be very inconspicuous if you're out on the street stopping every two minutes to shit yourself.”
“I have done brilliant detective work in a worse state than this—!” Sherlock's diatribe dissolves as a spasm paralyses him, and when it passes, he shakes with helpless, quiet, dry-eyed sobs. "Oh, God. Oh, God, please, John, please help me. I'm in hell. It doesn’t even know which direction it wants to go now."
Somehow, John keeps himself from laughing. “I’m sorry. You can endure it for a few hours. You'll be better tomorrow. Let's get you back to bed; you'll feel better under some blankets. Do you think you can tolerate a bit of fruit jelly?”
“Hate jelly. Shan't feel better,” Sherlock mumbles, sounding like a child, and it’s all John can do not to hold Sherlock in his arms the way he would a sick little boy, knowing Sherlock would make John's life a misery if he dared.
John doesn’t fuss tucking Sherlock in. He leaves a few dry towels on the bedspread and holds Sherlock’s wrist to check his pulse. Sherlock is weak enough to submit, but says, “If nothing else, John, I need my laptop and my phone. If I can’t leave, let me at least work from here. There are still things I can do—things that I need to find out."
Sighing, “Oh, all right,” John goes to fetch the electronics from the sitting room. First, though, he takes a moment to put the kettle on, preparing a cup of sugary peppermint tea for Sherlock, and a three-bags-strong mug of Tesco Gold for himself.
By the time John returns, Sherlock's teeth are chattering, and he has clenched the blanket around him as if trying to merge it with his flesh. He greedily seizes the laptop, hissing a happy “Yesssss.” Once it's open he takes the cup from John's grasp and gulps at it, grimacing, setting it back on the table at safe ignoring distance. "Proper tea next time," Sherlock mutters, fingernails clattering on the keyboard.
“It’ll help sort your stomach,” John tries to explain.
"Oh won't that be a blessing." Sherlock hesitates, a spasm of pain passing over his face, and edges the laptop over the surface of the bed towards John. “You’ll have to type for me. My hands are shaking too much.” Sherlock wraps the blankets around himself, even covering the top of his head, leaving only the oval of his face visible. “Right. I've got the terminal window open; type these precise characters.”
John hunts and pecks, alternating with sips of his own tea. “Sidney Sussex?” he reads from the header of the terminal window. “Isn’t that where you—”
“Yes, the college I attended. And from which I was expelled, then attended Oxford; also expelled. Don't interrupt. Have you got the 'nodal' query up yet? Good. Now type, all caps, ‘name search.’”
John follows the instructions literally to the letter, ending up at another blinking prompt telling him to wait. "What are you looking for?"
“A trail,” Sherlock replies, slurping the mint tea. He already sounds better, and there is color in his cheeks at last, though his hair clings to his sweat-wet forehead and his lips are gray and chapped. “I have a hunch. Don’t talk. Type.”
“It says 'student records–archives' and it's blinking.”
“1996 dash 2000.”
“Search,” John reports back.
Sherlock smiles grimly. “Moriarty, comma, James,” he says.
“Oh,” says John quietly. He types it in. “Not found,” he reads.
“Give it here. You’re too slow.” He takes the laptop back, and his white fingertips skitter across the keyboard. John sips his tea and watches as query after query returns the same message: Not found.
“Wiped,” Sherlock sighs. “The records look intact. Photographs, marks, results, all of it. I’m there. But he’s not. But the edges are ragged; both Maths and Computer Science report one more total enrollment ‘97 to ‘98 than they display.”
“Amazing! How did you know?” John asks.
“He told me.”
“And you believed him?” At Sherlock's glare, John hastily amends, “Uh, never mind. But—how's that possible? Has he been following you all this time? Is it just a—a school rivalry, or—?”
“He was in different departments; I read Chemistry. We wouldn’t have seen each other in classes. And I followed him all this time, as well, without knowing it was him behind Carl Powers. It’s nothing to do with academics,” Sherlock replies. “More private. More . . . kinky.” He shakes his head and presses his lips together, a nauseated expression curling his lip. “We did seem to share some . . . extracurricular interests.” He stares at John. “I think he’s in love with me.”
“You what?” John blurts.
Snatching up one of the towels, Sherlock jumps out of bed again, running back toward the toilet. He collapses in the hallway before he makes it, and resumes retching, burying his face in the towel. He looks pitiful, pale and naked and bony with a cheerful orange beach towel wrapped around his head, the muscles in his back straining like a cat trying to expel a hairball. "Jesus!" John gasps. "Sherlock. Sherlock!"
His flatmate is retching too hard to draw breath. John slips his phone from his pocket and speed-dials Mrs. Hudson. "I'm sorry to bother you, but would you please make some hot broth for Sherlock? And bring up an extra blanket? He really, er, really needs help, and I'm having trouble looking after him by myself."
"Oh, of course, John," she replies gently. "Don't you worry; I'll be right up."
At the sight of her in the doorway, Sherlock loses the mint tea, all over the beach towel. “Oh, dear!” Mrs. Hudson squeaks in dismay. Sherlock tries to smile at her, but the expression drifts off his face and his eyes lose focus as he passes out.
Struggling to shift Sherlock's body and drag him to the sofa, John laughs humorlessly. "Yeah, it's like this," he says. "He's badly dehydrated. It's a wonder he's not delirious. Might be. Hell, I might be!"
“I’ll sit with him, John; you manage the towel,” Mrs. Hudson says briskly, her composure regained. “I’ve brought him one of my herbal soothers, and I’ll see that it gets into him when he comes round again. It’ll keep his fluids down. I think this is the worst of it. And look at you; you're nearly as bad off. You need to eat something and get some sleep; you'll not make him well by torturing yourself. You Army men think you're invincible.”
“No,” John replies, gathering up the towel, “no, we're really not.” He almost wouldn’t mind an herbal soother himself.
"Put those in the wash, please, on hot, not too much soap. And when you get back, you can spell me, and I’ll go make you some bacon sandwiches, and I've just made some lemon scones, and you'll have a few of them as well. It'll do him no good if you're out of sorts. You've done what you could. Tsk, oh, Sherlock. There, there, sweet boy.” She tucks a blanket around him and settles his head in her lap, gently stroking his forehead.
John starts the wash, and when he returns, Sherlock’s eyes are open, and Mrs. Hudson murmurs, “There, now, just let it melt in your mouth. Here’s John to look after you.”
Faintly, almost inaudibly, Sherlock whispers, "Thank you."
John settles on the sofa and Sherlock moves his heavy head into John's lap. His eyes close again and he seems to sleep, peacefully for a change. Mrs. Hudson returns with a plate. Once John’s finished the last buttery crumb of sarnie and scone, fatigue has overwhelmed him, tea or no tea.
He locks the door, settles back onto the sofa next to Sherlock, and stares at the ceiling, his exhausted thoughts as knotted as he imagines Sherlock's stomach to be
Love? Love? Moriarty, the most conscience-less killer John has ever personally encountered, and nearly the most horrific one he’s ever heard of? What could Sherlock mean? Surely he’s got no idea what he’s talking about; Sherlock doesn’t understand love himself, so how could he diagnose it in someone else, especially someone as completely pathological as James Moriarty? John generally resists branding people as “sick,” but the whole concept of it all couldn't be considered any other way.
All those deaths. All those innocent people murdered, for a game. This is a bridge too far. John simply does not get it. And for now, anyway, he doesn't want to.
He strokes Sherlock’s hair and watches him breathe. Later, he will make sure Sherlock eats. John won’t rest until Sherlock’s healthy again (but a bit of sleep now, honestly, it can't hurt, can it?). And then they’ll go catch the bad guy. Together they’ll put an end to him; slay the monster, make the world a better place.
That’s love, damn it.
++++++++
When John wakes hours later, it’s morning all over again, and Sherlock’s already up.
He's seated on the toilet again, but he's wearing his dressing gown, talking on his phone, and showing no signs of physical discomfort. His voice is in a higher register, an unfamiliar accent; if John wasn’t looking right at him, he’d never think it was Sherlock speaking. “Danielle, right? Yeah, hi.” He glances up at the approaching John, and holds up his hand to demand John’s silence. “I haven’t been able to contact Professor Coates, and I’m trying to verify a quote by one of his students? Yeah, I’ll hold a moment. Oh, I didn’t say, my name’s Ian Maybury, I’m writing for the Guardian? Yes, cheers, thanks.”
“You all right?” John whispers.
“Fine,” Sherlock says in his normal voice. He looks much improved, though the dark circles under his eyes have deepened, and the bruises on his face are starting to turn purple. Suddenly his eyes brighten; he’s back on the line. "Yes, hello! Professor Coates, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. I’m wondering, by any chance, if you recall there was a special student in Maths in ’97. Little bloke, maybe 13, 14, bright as a button, a Dubliner? Dark hair and eyes.”
Sherlock listens patiently, and then says, “Do you remember his name? I’m trying to track down one of his student papers in Iwasawa theory but your name tends to—yes, you remember him, don’t you? Oh, I understand, I’m shit with names myself. Takes after my mum, yeah? Ha! Heh, right. Well, thank you for your time, I’ll try Professor Holt next.” Sherlock slowly slides the phone into a pocket of his dressing gown, and meets John’s eyes. “Could you help me into the bath, please?” he asks, painfully sliding the robe from his shoulders. “I don’t think I can stand on my own.”
“Sure,” John says, “sure.”
Sherlock’s armpits stink of poison sweat and his hair is crispy with it. John gently soaps Sherlock’s skin and hair, rinses and dries him. Wants to kiss him so badly, but doesn’t want to hurt the still-bruised lips. Oh, but it turns him on, having Sherlock so weak and pliable, submitting meekly to being bathed, his cheeks flushed pink, his eyes heavy-lidded, as if the phone performance used up every ounce of energy he had. “It’s true. He told me the truth," he marvels. “He was there. He. Was. There! Maths and Comp-Sci, just as I thought. He’s been watching me. Wanting me. Since he was a kid. I don’t know why.”
“’Course you know why. Let’s get you back into bed,” John murmurs. “You’re knackered. I don’t suppose you bothered to feed yourself while you were up?”
Sherlock just laughs at him. “He was there,” he repeats deliriously, “he was there.”
This time, John tucks Sherlock in tight, edging his trash bin directly next to the bed. “Now, will you rest?” John asks. “Now that you got your answer?”
“Only another lead,” Sherlock mumbles. He yawns hugely, and seems dazed when it passes. “Bless those herbal soothers . . . What time is it?”
“It’s—” John has to check, himself. “Half seven. Can you go back to sleep, do you think? Even for a bit? I’ll have hot soup for you when you wake up. And toast. If you . . . want toast.”
“What I want—” Sherlock yawns again. “—is for you to pack for overnight. And take the 9:24 to Cambridge. And take a look at those records, physically.”
“Sherlock—”
“You’re right,” Sherlock says softly, cutting off John’s protest. He lifts one of John’s hands, and presses his red-and-purple lips to the back of it, then holds it lovingly against his own face. A kiss by proxy. “I can’t go anywhere in this state. I’m not coming off a six-month binge. I could easily have died from an overdose; I received the precise amount of morphine possible, over the course of four days, before it would have become dangerous. He’s good, I’ll give him that. I’ll recover by tomorrow night. But I need those records. I need that proof. Now. If that information can be recovered, it’s a large piece in the puzzle, and it begins to come together. We shall have him,” he insists, staring at John with half-mad, wide, determined eyes. “We will know from whence he came, his earliest areas of expertise—”
“Besides cold-blooded murder and botulinium,” John says dryly.
“John. Please. Do this for me.”
“I can’t leave you.”
“Yes, you can. We do this together, or not at all. This is your move. I can work from here, but someone needs to talk to Professor Coates, and also Jonathan Rye, who is still in the area though he is no longer employed as one of Stephen Hawking’s assistants. Use your medical credentials. Talk to Rye and find an in from him. It’s all incest and gossip at Cambridge, but hard copy will be useful for making our—” He yawned again. “Making our case.”
“There is no case, Sherlock,” John says gently.
“There is,” Sherlock replies, his eyes suddenly very clear and incisive. “I am the case. He and I. The connection. It is a lead on which I shall reel him in. Use his own ‘love’ against him.” He all but spit the word. “Promise me, John. Find it. The proof.”
“OK,” John says, resigned. He strokes Sherlock’s hair off his forehead. “I’ll get dressed. Right now, though, I’m making you something to eat and making sure you eat it.” He attempts a smile, but his face is too tight and worried for it to make it very far. “Toast. And soup.”
Sherlock smiles—a real, genuine, friendly smile. “I’d rather have a kebab right now, to be honest.”
John brightens. “Really?”
“No.”
“Hm,” says John. “I’d better get to it, while you’re still charming.”
Once John has seen an entire cupful of broth and a whole slice of dry toast disappear into Sherlock, and not come back out again, he dresses himself and packs a bag of clean clothes, his laptop and phone. Sherlock is absorbed in his own laptop, taking notes onto a sheet of paper with a pencil; at the moment John is finished, Sherlock hands over the paper. “Names. Phone numbers, addresses, location of archives. If you’ve got a moment to go to the library and check the local newspapers from ninety-six to two thousand, please do; our boy genius might have made the papers once or twice. I did. Note any gaps. And get Jonathan Rye. Moriarty would have worked directly with Professor Hawking in mathematics; Rye might well remember the little bastard and what he was like. Remember that his name might not have been that, or he might have been there under a different name—remember that he had already killed Carl Powers by then, only months previous to the time when he arrived at Cambridge. Let’s see if we can find out who else he might have done. I have some access from here, and if I find any leads, I’ll text. All right, then?”
John takes a deep breath. “Can I trust you’ll be all right?”
“Don’t be an old woman, John; we’ve already got one on the premises. By the way, if she’s about, ask her to bring up another herbal soother.” Sherlock grins at John’s expression. “I’d hate to lose my breakfast. Now skip along.”
“No smoking,” John says.
“No promises.” Sherlock winks. “See you Friday morning.”
John glances worriedly back at the flat from the landing outside. He doesn’t hear the sound of any vomiting, or groaning, or other distress, only the merry clickety-clack of Sherlock’s fingers on keyboard. He passes by Mrs. Hudson’s door without knocking; if Sherlock wants to get an herbal soother, he can ask for it himself.
It’s sunny and gorgeous in Cambridge when John arrives; the beautiful campus buildings fill John with a vague sense of social-class jealousy. Still, he follows up on Sherlock’s directions, heading directly to the offices of Professor Brian Coates, emeritus, formerly of the computer sciences department. His secretary, Danielle, is a lissome redhead in coral lipstick and a little blue dress so demure that it turns back round to flagrantly sexy. Sheer black tights with tiny polka dots on gorgeous, curvy, strong legs and high heeled shoes with the little strap across the top of the foot. Almost automatically John chats her up and she chats back, and by the time Coates makes it to the office to meet him, John’s got a date to take Danielle for a drink that night. It’s not until he’s in Coates’s inner office before it occurs to John that perhaps going for drinks wasn’t exactly why Sherlock had sent him up here.
Still, he gets back to the task at hand. Coates is rather an old man, to John’s surprise; for some reason he imagined that computer science professors would be younger and hipper. No, Coates is one of the old guard, part of the punch-card generation, and though he’s well into his seventies, he’s got a sharp mind. “Moriarty? That’s right, that was his name. Yes, I do remember that student. He was very young, quite remarkable, quite interested in the history of computing, as well as the internet, which was still quite exotic back then. Still, he wasn’t interested in computer games. He was a lot more interested in theory. And also the phone phreakers, the early hackers, the ones who could break into systems using only a phone dial tone simulator. He was an expert on all that—going on about Captain Crunch, and that sort of thing.”
“So, crime,” John prompts, a little stiffly.
Coates shrugs and blinks behind his thick glasses. “More like—possibilities. Infrastructures. Languages. He was also a maths whiz, if I recall correctly.”
“Do you remember hearing his name in context with anything else since?” John asks.
“Ah, well, no, no, I really don’t poke my head out much. I’ve never been much one for news. Anyway, yes, I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you. He was very pleasant, almost solicitously so. I remember he was always very well kept for a teenager, almost as though he wished that he were wearing a school uniform, but one from the old days. The very old days—Victorian!” Professor Coates laughs. “Funny lad. I wished him well. Is he?”
“Um—he is,” John replies, discomfited. “For some reason, he has disappeared from the school records. I just found it curious. Is there a backup of them anywhere I could access?”
“I’m afraid not. Victim of format rot. The backups were on stacks of ZIP disks, and they were lost when the building that housed them flooded several years back. Not to mention the fact that I doubt there’s a working ZIP drive in the city anywhere, and if there were one, it’d be here!”
“Hm,” John says. “What was the cause of the flood, if you recall?”
The professor’s fluffy eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Now that you mention it,” he says slowly, “it was vandalism, during the big war protest some years ago. Some protestor or other opened a water main. Turns out they had the wrong building, anyway; they wanted the one across the way. Got off with a warning and a fine. I mean, I didn’t want war any more than anyone else, but that’s no way to get the message across. Anarchists never change, do they?”
John shakes his head. “No, they do not,” he agrees with a sigh.
There’s nothing at the newspaper morgue, either; whole issues missing, the microfiche abstracts of articles unreadable. It looks as though someone has been at them with a razor blade. At the edge of the spool, would never have been noticed by anyone not looking closely, is a tiny heart scraped into the emulsion.
He texts Sherlock. He’s been here. Nothing on file; all destroyed. But he left a heart in the margin of a microfiche for you.
The immediate reply: How romantic. Have you talked to Rye yet? SH
No, on my way there now.
Ask him about Professor Hawking. And don’t get too drunk tonight; you want to be able to perform. SH
John almost texts back “How did you know” or “You don’t mind, do you”, but decides against it, puts his phone away, and strides back out into the dreamy sunshine.
It’s odd to imagine Sherlock here, odder still to imagine a miniature Moriarty—did he have that sleazy little downy mustache in those days, too? Adolescent Sherlock, though; he must have been terribly awkward at seventeen, or perhaps terribly beautiful, all bones and limbs and eyes increasingly blurred with heroin or crackle-sharp with coke. Perhaps they were one and the same for young Jim, out of place, so far from home, with blood already on his hands and not an ounce of remorse in his heart. John slips almost into a reverie, strolling beside the glittering Cam, eyes dazzled by Cambridge’s endless green lawns and ancient stonework. It’s like a story, a thousand stories, a world’s understanding of fantasy and myth, Tolkien and Lewis. Imagination peeks from every corner.
“Oh, yes, how could I forget,” Jonathan Rye says, serving John tea on a shaded terrace at the side of his small house in the midst of the buildings of the campus itself. The whole place has been optimized for wheelchair access, cleverly, as unobtrusively as possible, but also a bit rusted, unused for a while. “Not the youngest student I’ve seen here, but one of the youngest, yes. James Moriarty was a transfer to Sidney Sussex from UCL, and before that he’d been at Dublin City University, where he’d entered as a sudden prodigy at the age of eleven and immediately began wrecking the EECA. Not entirely sure what he was doing in London on his own; as far as I knew, his father was a professor at Trinity, but James never mentioned his family at all. It was as if he had emancipated himself already. At any rate, by the time he arrived here, he was already working on postgraduate-level research in network security, but it had already started to bore him and he began to concentrate more on applied mathematics. We called him the Macrophage.” Rye has the beefy, muscular appearance that characterizes all of the personal assistants of the esteemed Professor Hawking, but the muscles are no longer taut; he’s visibly going to seed. “Just absorbed everything placed in front of him, and kept moving, looking for more. Brilliant mathematical mind and he hadn’t even really given it much thought, but when he was finally challenged, it was a sight to see.”
“Do you have any of his papers I could look at?” John asks hopefully, knowing he won’t understand a word, but just to get the satisfaction of seeing his name somewhere, so that he’d feel like less of a ghost. So hard to even believe in Moriarty sometimes; he’s so unlikely, so slippery, he is a phantom, a boogeyman, who only comes in nightmares, when children have been very, very naughty. But who ever did anything to him that would justify what he became?
Rye shrugs. “Not my area,” he admits. “I can barely balance my checkbook.” His smile thins.
“Would Professor Hawking?” John asks innocently.
It’s like a cartoon, how the red floods his face up from the neck. “I wouldn’t know,” Rye all but spits. “Again, not my area. Not anymore. I was let go some—some years ago. Besides, good luck in getting to him. He’s like the Pope.”
“I’m–I’m sorry,” John stammers.
“It’s not right,” Rye goes on, staring into the corner, his face slumping into a frown. “I didn’t do anything. But that’s Stephen, isn’t it? He wants what he wants, he gets into his little snits, and no one can tell him a thing. It sickens me to watch them fawn over him like he’s a saint or . . . He’s just a bloke with an illness; doesn’t make him better than the rest of us. Just good at physics and maths, is all, and wrote a book, and now he’s God, or he’d like to think so. That new one he’s got, that Jake or whatever his name is, what he gets up to with Stephen’s wife. And him too, I’d bet!”
“Oh, dear,” says John, grimacing. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.”
Rye waves his hand and his frown turns sad. “Ah, well, that’s how it is,” he says. “Mustn’t grumble. I just . . . can’t see myself being a carer for anyone else, you know? Say what you will about Stephen; he’s a bit unforgettable. Difficult as hell, but extraordinary.”
“Everyone’s extraordinary, in his own way,” John says.
“You know what I mean,” says Jonathan Rye, and John sees, flashing in his eyes, the truth of it, written all over John’s face. “What with Sherlock Holmes. Imagine if he quit you. How you’d feel.”
“I didn’t—I didn’t know you knew,” John mutters, embarrassed.
“I do read the internet, you know,” Rye replies. He suddenly narrows his eyes at John. “Moriarty,” he repeats, thoughtfully. “Your blog—Moriarty. You mentioned—”
“Yeah,” says John. “We think it’s the same bloke.”
All anger has left Rye’s face; he blinks a few times in astonishment. “Oh, dear,” he says, “I bet. Oh, God, why couldn’t I put it together? Oh, dear. It’s all coming back to me now.” He smiles sheepishly at John. “There were . . . parties. You know.”
John asks, “Was Professor Hawking at any of them? Or was it just you, on your off hours? Maybe you should have invited him.” Leaving the rest of his tea on the table, John stands, nods a brief goodbye, and makes his exit, standing back in the brilliant sun sighing with relief. And a touch of confusion.
When did he learn to talk the way Sherlock did? It’s as if he brought a tiny sliver of Sherlock along with him, embedded in his mind, ready to emerge like a snake striking at information. He isn’t sure he likes it.
He texts back to Sherlock: Rye confirms. In London at right time for CP. Look into a Professor Moriarty at Trinity; see what happened to him. And you’ll have to tell me about these parties. Home tomorrow.
That night he has more whiskey than he ought, after a hot day like this one and after the days he’s had, and he ends up falling asleep between Danielle’s legs with her dotted tights still on, waking in the morning to an empty bed and a brutal headache.
After a shower, he walks the few miles to the train station to clear his head a bit more. He’s received no texts since the exchange in the early afternoon, while he was still examining the newspapers. He hopes that Sherlock had got ahold of another herbal soother and some food, and had spent the rest of the day and night asleep, healing. At a kiosk at the train station, he purchases a London paper, and falls asleep under its spread leaves for the journey.
It’s a dreadful hassle to get a taxi, so John ends up taking the tube back to Baker Street, a lengthy and annoying journey. John tries to distract himself with the newspaper, and succeeds, reading of a badly botched mission in Afghanistan that resulted in multiple casualties, both civilian and American military. A wedding shot up by mistake. It sickens John, but he can’t keep himself from reading the story over and over again, trying to find the loophole, the error, that would have prevented the fatal outcome. But there isn’t anything. He hates admitting that sometimes there just isn’t a hero, a simple answer; things went sideways a long, long time ago, and now the only thing left to do is mourn and clean up the bodies.
At least it’s a beautiful afternoon at Baker Street when he finally arrives. John ducks into Speedy’s to get some chocolate croissants for Sherlock; the task of fattening him back up will be one that John enjoys greatly, hoping that for once, Sherlock will have excellent appetite. John does notice that Speedy’s seems to have an entirely new staff on today; the nice young Indian bloke who usually staffs the counter is nowhere to be seen.
He remembers that this was the location of Sherlock’s initial poisoning, and tosses the croissants into the bin before going in and upstairs and home.
“Sherlock, I’m back,” he shouts ahead. “Sherlock? You awake?” He looks into Sherlock’s bedroom, only to see the bed as crisply made as it had been days ago. His own bedroom is disheveled, but just as deserted. “Sherlock!”
The flat is empty.
There’s a note on the TV in Sherlock’s impeccable handwriting.
John, I’m sorry. I’ve no choice. Have faith.
Below the TV set lies a torn scrap from the television section of the very edition of the newspaper that John has been reading all day, though he never got that far. John picks it up and scans it for information. On one side it’s just red; from the middle of a large image in an advert. On the other side is a TV listing.
4:20 - BBC2 - STAR TREK “Charlie X”. The Enterprise picks up an unstable 17-year-old boy with dangerous mental powers who lacks the training to handle them wisely.
John runs his hand through his hair at the forehead, and ends up clutching his temples as if willing his brain not to explode. “No,” he begs, almost falling to his knees on the carpet, “no. No. No, please, no.”